Name: How China controls the elements that power your life
Uploaded: 2026-01-31T11:38:35.000Z
Duration: 4 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

These 17 metals are crucial components of the products you use every day, even the device you're watching this on.

Adverbs of degree

Rare earths are in almost every modern electronic good.

Neodymium, for example, makes magnets that go into electric vehicles and wind turbines.

Gadolinium is used in lasers and as a contrast agent for MRIs.

And Europium is used in television and computer screens.

But despite their name, rare earths aren't actually very rare.

There are more than 15 countries and territories listed as having reserves.

Brazil, for example, has the world's second largest reserves of rare earth elements.

Its firms supply nearly 70% of the ore from which rare earths are extracted and more than 90% of the refined materials.

America gets 80% of its rare earths from China.

The first rare earths were discovered in the 1700s, but

the industry really flourished after they were found in California in 1949.

Then in the 1980s, China began opening hundreds of mining and processing firms.

The country surpassed America as the main producer at the turn of this century.

China now controls the market partly because of its huge scale and partly because other countries were happy to avoid the extremely polluting work.

Mining rare earths is only part of the process.

Separating and purifying the minerals takes time and money.

In the west, labor is more expensive and there are stricter environmental regulations.

China's dominance, though, is now creating a problem.

In April 2025, Trump declared 34% tariffs on China, sparking fears of a trade war.

Two days later, China put export controls in place, meaning that rare earths could no longer be sent out of the country without a special license.

Further restrictions were announced in October, though a one year delay was agreed after talks in South Korea.

China's become more willing to hold up the supply of rare earths, but the world still needs them.

The year long truce might lead companies and governments to relax.

But China knows the power of its rare earth weapon and will only be tempted to use it again.

That means alternative options need to be developed.

To reduce America's reliance on China, Donald Trump's Defense Department has become the largest shareholder in the country's only rare earths producer, MP Materials.

Brazil and Australia also have large reserves.

Anthony Albanese, Australia's Prime Minister, has signed a deal with Trump to cooperate on mining projects across the two countries.

Today will be seen as a really significant day in our relationship, but

it will take years to ramp up production to the levels needed to satisfy demand.

Alternatively, recycling could reduce the amount of new rare earths that need to be extracted in the first place.

The ores that contain rare earths have quite low concentrations.

So the best source of the metals is in the products that already exist.

Apple has committed to a 500 million dollar partnership with MP Materials to make magnets from recycled rare earths.

We're thrilled to work together on a cutting edge rare earth recycling line in Mountain Pass, California.

This too will take years because there's a chicken and egg problem.

Having a lot of rare earths come from recycling relies on having a lot of products out there to recycle.

At the moment, most of the electric cars on the road are relatively new, and

so they aren't going to show up in the scrapyard for many years.

Another approach is to find alternatives to rare earths.

After China banned the export of the elements to Japan in 2010, Japanese firms developed a heavy rare earth free magnet for hybrid vehicle motors.

Alternative materials are also gaining favor.

For example, scientists have been synthesizing tetratenite in nature.

It has magnetic properties similar to those of rare earth metals.

Scientists have been able to make tetratenite in labs since the 1960s, but it's slow and expensive.

They're looking at ways to speed things up and get the price down.

Consistent investment is perhaps the most important way to see change.

It's in the past, when China has restricted and then restored the supply of rare earths, companies have reduced investment into alternatives.

But now that China is using its power over rare earths more often, the rest of the world has a strong reason to keep investing.